It is a truism to say that knowledge workers use computers. However, professionals do live in silos and BCS-KIDMM - a special interest group of the British Computer Society - attempts to break down the walls which exist between 'computer types' and 'knowledge organization types'. It is about starting out from where you are and reaching out to others. It is about going beyond territoriality.

Automatic metadata generation for resource discovery. This research exercise was carried out for JISC in 2006. Aimed to establish the state of the art regarding machine extraction and generation of metadata. Considered the whole range of metadata: descriptive, technical, rights, preservation, subject, LOM, etc. Embraced both intrinsic and extrinsic metadata. Extrinsic metadata tools show rapid development. The majority of tools use a controlled vocabulary or other subject authority.

The presentation focused on NKOS : Networked Knowledge Organization Systems/Services. This is an informal network for enabling knowledge organization systems (KOS), such as classification systems, thesauri, gazetteers, and ontologies, asnetworked interactive information services to support the descriptionand retrieval of diverse information resources through the Internet. In addition, there was talk about the possibility of KOS Registries.

BS 8723: Structured vocabularies for information retrieval – A guide to this new standard was offered and key questions were asked about it concerning challenges and opportunities. Should we think of BS 8723-2 as needing rigorous implementation, or is it more of a springboard from which to launch new ideas? Facet analysis practice as developed by the CRG – will it come of age, or has the genie already left the bottle? Is it useful/practical to apply a tight definition to “taxonomy”? Which offers greater benefit: one exchange format for all applications, or a choice of formats, supported by transforms between them?  Format extension: should it reach towards ontologies, or towards classification schemes, or what? And what about folksonomies – is there any benefit from considering them at all in BS 8723 or ISO 25964?

The Seminar explored current developments in knowledge organization systems and the work of groups in the knowledge organization field, such as NKOS and BCS-KIDMM. The programme included presentations on the new standard for structured vocabularies (BS 8723) and an automatic metadata generation project.